EdChoice Legal Advocates Moves to Defend Religious Schools’ Participation in Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program
Press Release: For Immediate Release
August 21, 2024
For more information or to schedule an interview, contact:
Ann Marie Miller, EdChoice
Ann@edchoice.org | 312-841-4961
EdChoice Legal Advocates Moves to Defend Religious Schools’ Participation in Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program
EdLA Files “Friend of the Court” Brief in St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, et al. vs Roy.
LITTLETON – EdChoice Legal Advocates filed an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in a case challenging the power of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood to exclude Catholic preschools from participating in Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program.
Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program is available to “every child in the state . . . at no charge, during the school year preceding the school year in which the child is eligible to enroll in kindergarten.”
Colorado says each preschool provider must provide services to all children regardless of background, but it allows exceptions for schools that focus on, for example, low-income or disabled children. Yet, Colorado will not accommodate the religious exercise of Catholic schools, which ask parents to accept traditional Catholic views on sexuality and gender.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that refusing to accommodate religious exercise while permitting exemptions for secular reasons amounts to religious discrimination. In a series of cases in recent years, it has said that states may not target religious exercise for exclusion from government programs.
“Colorado’s refusal to tolerate traditional Catholic doctrine in its universal preschool program is just a repackaged version of discrimination the Supreme Court has already rejected,” said Thomas M. Fisher, Vice President and Director of Litigation at EdChoice Legal Advocates. “Parents deserve real choices, not a monolith of schools offering the same instruction.”
School choice programs are successful when parents have meaningful choices, not when states impose abstract “equal opportunity” mandates such as Colorado’s. Catholic schools have been critical to the success of education freedom for decades and studies show they and other religious schools excel at teaching tolerance and civic engagement.
Milton Friedman observed that the problem to be solved by education freedom is “an excess of conformity” and the solution “is to foster diversity” in education. In Colorado, excluding Catholic providers will reduce diversity as well as opportunity for all children, since some who would have gone to Catholic preschool will now take up spots in secular preschools. Colorado’s equal opportunity mandate thus deprives the preschool marketplace of exactly the meaningful choices parents need for their children to succeed.
Every parent in Colorado should have the freedom to choose where to send their schools, and it is therefore vital to defend religious freedom as an option for parents and families.
To be connected with Thomas Fisher, contact Ann Marie Miller at ann@echoice.org.
EdChoice, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to advance educational freedom and choice for all students as a pathway to successful lives and a stronger society, launched EdLA in 2023 to defend school choice programs in the states.
Case documents:
St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, et al. vs Roy Amicus filing
###
